Define Willow
by Mediancat
Summary: After the events of "Grave," Willow writes Buffy a letter.


Dear Buffy,  
  
Hi there - hope things are going well for you. (Bet you're surprised to be getting a letter from me on paper - me, the queen of cyberspace. Giles isn't letting me use my computer too much. He says he won't let me trade in one retreat for another. I'll explain what he means later.)  
  
I hope Sunnydale's still there. Yeah, I know, the irony's so thick you can cut it with a plastic knife. But I mean it. I hope everyone's alive, and healthy, and that your problems with bad guys have been strictly routine. I figure taking me on might have been as weird as it ever got. I hope that's as weird as it ever gets.  
  
In case I haven't said this recently, I'm sorry for what I did. Not that that makes up for it. But I am. I swear. Not just for trying to bring on armageddon (yeah, that's the trivial part) but for what I said to all of you.  
  
The thing is, I'm not sorry because at some level, in some way, I didn't think what I said was true; they were. I'm sorry because of how they came out, and the way I said them, and the way I was interpreting them - I'm sorry I said them, period. But I can't pretend I was completely lying. If I hadn't felt like that -  
  
What happened, wouldn't have. You guys always respected me for my maturity, but I don't think I was ever really that mature. I was intelligent, and that covered up for it; but how did I react in a crisis that affected me?  
  
Badly. Very badly. Oz slept with Veruca, and I nearly cast a black magic spell for revenge. I found Xander kissing Cordelia, and I threw myself at Oz; when Xander didn't tell me that he'd slept with Faith, I ran to the bathroom and cried; when Anya and I got into that fight over Xander, it was because I was being jealous.  
  
Not the work of a mature person.  
  
And so I'm sorry I didn't tell you these things before, calmly, rationally, so that we could talk about them like friends do.  
  
Things here . . . well, things here. I've been doing a lot of thinking, and I've figured out a few things. One of them I've obviously already told you. Retreating . . . when you first met me, I was the computer geek to end all computer geeks. It's because, well, as you knew, computers were easier to deal with than people.  
  
And then Oz came along, and I threw myself into him, and computers were my fallback. And then magic.  
  
You may have noticed that once I threw myself into being a witch, I didn't use my computers so much anymore. But now I had three things to fall back on, so I wouldn't have to think about the fact that deep down inside I was still scared.  
  
-- I never told you about that part of the First Slayer's Dream, did I? You took me into a classroom and said "everyone knew" what I'd been hiding and ripped aside my clothes and left me looking like the same nerd I'd been way back when you met me.  
  
AND I WASN'T GOING TO BE THAT FRIGHTENED LITTLE GIRL ANYMORE. At least not where anybody could see it.  
  
Anyway, when Oz left, I fell back on the magic - but before I went too far, Tara rescued me. When Tara left - when I drove her away, I fell back on the magic that made her leave in the first place. Then I hurt Dawn. And that scared me enough that I stayed away from the magic.  
  
But inside, I was panicky, nervous. I didn't know who I was anymore. I tried being science girl, I tried being computer girl again, and none of them worked. I didn't have anything to define me now that I didn't have magic or Tara. And I couldn't have magic.  
  
So I had to get Tara back. HAD TO. She became my goal; then she became my life. I HAD to get her back. Winning her love back was the only thing in the entire world that mattered. She was the world to me.  
  
And I won her back.  
  
The problem with making someone your world though, is what happens when that world is taken from you.  
  
You know what happened.  
  
If I'd been a fighter, like you, I would have beaten Warren to a bloody pulp and then broken his neck. If I'd been my old computer self, I would have dumped him into the known sexual predator list. But I fell back on magic, and you know what happened.  
  
But magic, again, wasn't the disease; going cold turkey the way I did hurt a lot more than it helped in the long run. I'm not an addict; I never was, not really. I know, I know, you're thinking denial city and I'm the mayor. But, no. It wasn't like that. Yes, Rack did addict me to magic, temporarily; but my magic-use was a symptom of the big old honking disease that passes for my psyche. Dumping the magic was a quick fix; it made us think we'd solved the problem and that everything from then on would be hunky and dory both.  
  
Of course, it wasn't. It wasn't any addiction that led me to threaten Giles or to cast that amnesia spell on you guys, or just on Tara. (It wasn't even that that made me cast that spell that brought you back. I lied to Xander, and Tara, and Anya about how dangerous it was; I never even told Spike. I wanted you back, and nothing was going to stop me.) It was the sense of BEING SOMEONE it gave me that caused me to do those things. And Tara gave me that same sense. I was hers. I was defined.  
  
My entire life, I've been defining myself by other things, by other people; by you guys, or Oz, or computers, or magic. Or Tara.  
  
It's time I started defining myself.  
  
Anyway, say hi to everyone else for me, assuming they're still talking to me. Pass on my love.  
  
Willow 


End file.
